Well this episode was rather decent I should say. I laughed a few times at the beginning but later in the episode it started getting boring. Like I don't quite understand what they did with this episode first they hated the NSA and now its like "Oh well you will have to learn to live with it" or whatever type. But overall this episode was fairly okay. 6.5/10

PS: The new intro is decent but its still good.

Last edited by francisjairam121 on Thu Sep 26, 2013 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm on West Coast time this season, SPS. New Mexico, specifically, so the Albuquerque reference got a much bigger laugh from me than it would have otherwise.

Probably my favorite aspect is Fatass joining the NSA so he can blow the lid off their sh*t, but getting totally sidetracked when he learns they don't give a fuck about "Eric Cartman". That's some quintessential Fatass right there.

Butters proselytizing to the Jehovah's was funny enough, but to have his DMV religion blow up so fast that it went straight to the 'molest young boys' stage without getting into the minutia of who is in a position to do that shit is priceless. It plays into this notion that any institution seems to eventually get into a child molesting scandal, be it a church, a college, a media conglomerate, etc.

Given the depth of the subject, though, I expected a lot more from a couple of dudes with such supposed Libertarian credentials. Both Butters and Fatass' stories were silly when I expected one of them to be a little more serious to be the mouthpiece for M&T. Cartman's story went all egocentric and Butters' story when all "look how absurdly silly Butters is".

This was a rich story idea but I think they could've got more out of it. The government not giving a sh*t about Fatass when he thinks they should could have been played up a little more by having Cartman conniving about some Fatass sh*t earlier in the ep. Other than infiltrating the NSA, I mean. I needed one thing that we would be lead to believe the NSA was concerned about regarding Fatass, but then the joke is 'nope, not really!'

What I got from the episode is that the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. You have Cartman showing the hypocrisy of a lot of people who hate the NSA, yet tell everyone every bit of their life via social media. On the other end you have Butters turning "don't do anything wrong and you won't get in trouble" into religion. Then you have the NSA which gets its info from torturing Santa. That's pretty evil right there, and while some of the parts of the episode try to approach the topic from multiple angles, I don't think the show is being used to say that the NSA is justified or anything. I think the show was kind of pointing out how ridiculous this all is, in a light-hearted South Park way. But maybe that's just me. Either way, there was a lot they tried to cram in this episode, but for the most part, i thought they made it work.

Butters pretty much carried this episode. Everything he did was hilarious. The whole Cartman thing with Shitter and Alec Baldwin didn't really do anything for me.

If you ask me the whole episode would have worked better if they'd been willing to take a hard stand on the whole NSA issue, either for or against. By just being ambivalent about the whole thing, they created an episode without much conflict, and therefore without much of a point.

I'll talk about the new opening in this post. I like the 3-D effects. I like how it's a nod back to the early seasons. We see Kenny's tomb stone, then the boys (including Kenny) board the bus.

After driving by the farm and the cows from the first season, we go by Starks's Pond where we find Grandpa Marsh reading a newspaper which is asking: "Who is Mysterion?"

It was great seeing Officer Barbrady driving in his car in front of Skeeter's Bar. Then there's the shot on the left of good ol' Tom's Rhinoplasty and on the right Tweek's Bros. Coffee. So Tweek has not been forgotten

Now, we see both City Wok and City Sushi, with the sixth graders driving by on their bicycles, and Towelie walking by in the foreground.

As the bus drives around the corner, being followed by Barbrady, we see the Park's County Police Station. Then, as they pull up to the school and Mr. Hankey goes by, we see Terrance and Phillip walking by the school.

7/5/10 for the season opener.

10/10 for the Season 17 opening theme song.

***EDIT***

And thank you, M&T, for leaving Mint Berry Crunch flying by towards the end of the theme song. That should never change imo.

Very meh for me. Kinda funny how Cartman and Alec Baldwin were the only two people that had the 'shitter' device but I didn't enjoy the episode much. With everything else related to government or politics, I simply don't care. I don't find it funny. Just boring. I don't watch comedy shows to hear about the government. Exactly what was the reason Butters went to the DMV in the first place? Felt a lil' random. The idea behind it was a lil' funny but it didn't deliver. As Cartman said in the end, no one cares if the NSA keep tabs on people. I don't, and that's why I didn't care about the idea.

4/10

Enjoyable new intro though! Was refreshing to see a brand-new look!

I love: Stan, Butters, Cartman, Sharon.

I ship: Stan/Cartman <3

Stan: MMOOMM!!Sharon: What is it honey? (gasp!) My baby's killed again!Haa, I love that line.

Idk, the NSA holding Santa prisoner and torturing him at their headquarters doesn't make a lot of sense, spying-wise. I mean, wouldn't it be more logical to torture the all-seeing, omniscient god (the simian hippo) or at least Jesus in order to gather some useless information on everybody? Wouldn't it also further reinforce the idea of the government becoming the "new god" in the eyes of certain people?

So the dimwits running the NSA got inspired by a nursery rhyme? Yeah, that pretty much explains it. Poor old Santa! What did he do to deserve this?! Unless it's a clone of Santa replicated by Mephisto specifically for that purpose. The phrase "We can't let our enemies get their hands on this" implies the NSA's Santa is not the only Santa out there.

I wonder if the whole "central computer" thingy was borrowed from Minority Report.